The Gates of Hell

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A few links to round off the week.
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First off, a website that catalogues known entrances to Hades located around the UK
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http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/index.html

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I know of several, as yet, unpublicised entrances to Hell in the South London area and will be submitting my findings to this site shortly.
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Second off, a photographer's website that has some good pictures on it
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http://www.marktucker.com/index2.html

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not much else to say about that site really.
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Thirdly, and finally, an infantile page of pictures of two people dressed as puppets acting out a porn movie
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http://www.askjade.com/puppet/2/

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... in keeping with my decision to feature more material in keeping with 21st Century tastes and expectations
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A moment of quiet and tasteful reflection

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Are we all just meat?

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Every time something horrible happens in the World, like the recent tsunami, various pundits trundle out the tired old question:

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'If there is a God why would he permit such a thing to happen'

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which invites the answer that 'Of course there's no such thing as a God. If there was, he wouldn’t permit bad things to occur'
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Earlier on in the week I wrote a post that attempted to give an answer that was consistent with the Christian, Islamic and Hebrew idea of God. An alternative answer could have been 'Well, maybe there is a God and maybe he doesn’t give a damn.
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But that would have been a profane and bleak answer. I prefer the happy one myself.
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I would love it if the media pundits asked a different question for a change, something along the lines of:

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'Lots of people died yesterday. Why should we give a damn?'

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The answers to that question would be a lot more interesting.
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The point is if you have religious belief, or have grown up in a society that is based on religious beliefs, even though it pretends otherwise, you are provided with an answer to that question …

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Human life is sacred
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Human life is sacred because religion tells us so. Religion also provides us with worked examples of what constitutes good and bad behaviour.
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But what if you don’t believe in God? What if you believe the universe spontaneously appeared from nothing, life was generated accidentally from a pool of slime and that humans are the mere result of random mutation and natural selection? What if you believe all of these things and somebody said:

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'Lots of people died yesterday. Why should we give a damn?'

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Remember, humans are merely part of a random evolutionary tree that encompasses all life. We keep hearing how similar we all are to animals. We are bombarded with stories about how everything that makes us us can be reduced and explained away as straightforward biochemical reactions. Sure, we have brains but so do chickens. Like chickens, we're just meat. 18 billion chickens were slaughtered globally for food last year. I didn’t see any appeals for chicken relief on TV this week.

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Ah, but people love, people create, people aspire to the spiritual …

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But love is a hormone-powered trick to bind us into reproductive units, artistic creation is merely an expression of adaptive capability and spirituality is a self-delusion.

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Ah but we're smarter than chickens, maybe that's why it's OK to eat them. So, presumably if a force of super-intelligent aliens were to visit us one day it would be perfectly OK for them to use US as food. Come to think of it, I've met some pretty stupid people in my time. I wonder what they taste like?

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It gets worse. In an atheistic World is there such a thing as good or bad? When a lion eats a cute baby antelope is that bad? If a tsunami kills 150,000 is that bad? If the tsunami was bad it can't be in the religious sense of the word. Maybe it's bad economically? Would the atheist argue the tsunami was bad because it caused the loss of 150,000 potential consumers?

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Regardless of what atheists and humanists might pretend, a random pointless universe can only contain random, pointless things. I've occasionally pushed this point with atheists and humanists I've encountered and have usually been met with dissonant behaviour, which often degrades to bad tempers and shouting. Admittedly, questions from me like 'Explain to me in atheistic terms why your five year old daughter is any more important or special than that log I just left in the men's room' don’t help.

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Occasionally, the more enlightened atheist or humanist will point out that it is perfectly possible to develop a moral code from scratch, without reliance on belief in a benevolent entity. But these systems never really work out. They can’t. Where do you start?
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Maybe with: An action is good because it feels good?
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Mmmm, like going to the dentists? Oh, but you feel better afterwards. Show me the equation then. How about dying for a noble cause? Does that feel good afterwards? What about Hannibal the Cannibal and the things that make him feel good?

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Or maybe you could play the selfish gene card: You should treat human life a sacred because it's in your own self-interest as you yourself might be killed in a society that doesn’t value human life.
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But what if I'm the baddest mother in that society? What's good for a wimp isn’t necessarily good for me.

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Etc etc

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Most humanist ethical schemes are crude devices to head-off revulsion at the implications of an atheistic World view. At the moment, most people don’t think about these implications but over the next the couple of generations they'll have to. Science has been having a ball with genetics in recent years. Does anyone really believe that there aren't countless labs out there, staffed by some very dubious people, doing some very dubious things with baby chunks and just biding their time.

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The whole situation gets worse the more you think about it. If we have become top species through survival of the fittest, then isn’t it scientifically justifiable to sterilise people with mental or physical disabilities? After that we could move onto people with hereditary diseases. Then maybe some selective breeding. We might even consider speeding up the mutation rate a little bit.

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Scientists have toyed with projects like this in the not too recent past. They were only stopped because a lot of other people thought what they were doing was bad. Bad, as in the religious definition of the word. But religion is superstitious mumbo jumbo isn’t it? A mere crutch for the feeble minded to deal with the reality of their own frailty and mortality. Nonsense like that is holding us back and, what's worse, it means we have to have our shoes searched in airports.

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So, no such thing as good and bad. Humans no more special than chickens and all our higher aspirations written-off as no more than a quirk of our glands.
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Sounds like a shitty World to me. Sounds like the World that's being built all around us as I type.

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Atheists - surprisingly good sport

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I slapped up a post a few days ago that attempted to give a religious explanation for the death and misery caused by the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Towards the end of the post I described atheism as being a belief system, no different and no more scientific than God-based belief systems. After all, if you cannot prove the existence of God you cannot disprove the existence of God either. Anyone is perfectly within their rights to call themselves an atheist but I maintain that they are being dishonest if they pretend that this is somehow a science-backed position. Those of us lacking the faith to believe or disbelieve in a God are best described as agnostics; given that there's no objective way of being sure either way.
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Anyway, someone picked me up on that claim by way of a couple of comments. Their point was that atheism can be the absence of belief in a God, or gods, rather than an active disbelief and that this is a scientific point of view.
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Yes, if you choose to define atheism this way, it is an objective statement. You are saying 'I have no opinion on the existence of God', which isn’t saying very much about anything except for your lack of thoughts on the matter. Anybody claiming to be this kind of atheist hasn’t got much to discuss with anybody else on the subject as, by their own admission, they don’t have an opinion. No Nobel prizes or invitation onto the alien mother ship to discuss the meaning and purpose of life for you I'm afraid.
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So, let's stick with the commonly understood meaning of atheism, as in 'I don’t believe in God', which, as discussed previously, is a non scientific belief system and effectively its own kind of religion. A religion where science is the new scripture and scientists the new priesthood.
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I first realised that Western Science was a religion about ten years ago. I was attending a Fortean conference in Central London. A good Fortean maintains a sceptical but open mind about anomalous observations discarded by mainstream science. Critically, the idea is NOT to embrace any loony theory that comes your way but to give it a fair hearing and judge it on its own merits without any preconceptions.
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Just like scientists do.
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Yeah right. And I'm Britney Spears.
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Scientists are no more virtuous, wise or free from emotion or prejudice than the rest of us. However, they are the priests of the secular age and so many of us, not least many scientists themselves, pretend that they are wiser, more virtuous and more even-handed than the rest of us. After all, if we can't trust science what can we have faith in?
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Anyway, one of the talks at the conference was given by a guy called Percy who maintained that the entire Apollo Program was hoax. Now this was in the pre Internet, pre Conspiracy days when this idea hadn’t been as circulated as widely as it has today.
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It came like a bombshell.
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There were dozens of people in the audience literally shaking with rage. They were furious. The Q&A session after the talk was more like an inquisition that an objective discussion. There were plenty of flaws in what Percy was saying but that wasn't what annoyed the audience. What annoyed them was the very suggestion that science had been twisted to accommodate a hoax. For all the world they acted like believers whose very articles of faith had been challenged.
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The biggest give-away was that none of them were laughing.
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If someone says something negative or silly about a subject you don't have a passionate conviction about, your response will be to ignore them, correct their error or, most effectively, laugh at them for being a nutter. If, however, someone passes a negative or silly comment about something you’re emotionally attached to, you get really pissed off.
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Those guys at the lecture were really pissed off.
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Which is why supposedly rationalist atheists can be just as good sport as supposedly irrational fundamentalist Christian. A sense of humour by-pass came fitted as standard with both of their belief systems.
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Has that Twink finished working on my Wang yet?

Bottle of Twink School Mate (next to Virgin Mary for scale)

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Words are funny things.
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In a fit of iPod jealously I decided to paint an old pair of head phones white with typists correction fluid. The plan was to then travel on public transport and jiggle my puffy, aged body round in an exaggerated parody of the iPod dance with the headphones connected to a c.1986 JVC Tape Walkman.
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Stage One - Find a bottle of typists correction fluid
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No problems there. I rummaged around my desk drawer and out came …
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A bottle of Twink
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I laughed. I laughed because I am a pathetic wee goblin of a manchild who finds that sort of thing funny.
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What was going on here? Could it be that everyone at Papermate was so out of tune with developments in the English language that they didn't know what a twink was. Did the brand name Twink predate the now common usage, as in the now long defunct Ayds slimming biscuits? I wouldn’t know, I've always been a Tippex man myself.
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Or, as I would like to believe, did someone at Papermate know exactly what a Twink was and decided to have a giggle pulling the corporate chain? Kind of like those guys who get the sack and stay at their posts long enough to record obscene customer service messages or paint dogs humping in the background of pictures on biscuit tins.
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Or maybe the contemporary meaning of Twink is not widely known. Just in case it isn’t, here are a couple of clues in the form of competitive explanations for the derivation of the word:

1. Twink comes from an acronym T.W.I.N.K. "Teenage, White, Into No Kink.
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2. Twink is a shortening of the name for the famous "TWINKIE" snack cake: a tasty, cream-filled snack with no nutritional value. The phallic shape of the "TWINKIE" snack cake should not escape the reader's attention.

If you're still not sure what I'm talking about just do a Google image search but only, and I stress only, if you're OK with gay porn.
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Yes, words are funny things. West Side Story was on TV as part of the Christmas Festivities and there we were listening to the now famous line:

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'I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel witty and pretty and gay!!!'
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which has morphed in subsequent productions into:
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'I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel witty and pretty and wise!!!'

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to reflect the change in the meaning of a certain word post 1961. As a relevant aside, West Side Story saw the first use of the word 'cool' to mean 'cool' as in 'Cool, Daddy-O', which was invented specifically for the show. Cool.
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All these thoughts of Twinks, Gayness and Coolness also reminded me of my first few months working in a firm of accountants in the late 1980's. The firm was fully equipped with state of the art word processing facilities. Word processing facilities produced by the Wang Corporation. This was back in the Happy Days when companies still employed pools of typists and mere mortals were not permitted to use word processors. Only they weren't called typists. To reflect the high-tech cutting edge nature of the equipment they were using they were referred to as Operators, Wang Operators. Yes, those first few difficult months knuckling down to the world of accountancy were occasionally brightened up by lines like:

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Go down and see my Wang Operator, Mavis, she should have finished working on my stuff by now

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Does anyone know how to use a Wang?

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Is that ready for Wanging yet?
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Like I said. I am a pathetic wee goblin of a manchild
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In praise of low tech aka Glory be to the anti-iPod

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A few years ago I received a freebie Fisher Space pen as a corporate gift. For anyone who doesn’t know the story, the Fisher Space pen was designed as part of the Apollo Moonshot program at a cost of $12m. The pen contains a pressurised ink reservoir, which means it can write …

• At any angle
• In a vacuum
• Under water
• In zero gravity

The story continues that, faced with the same problem, the Russians simply used pencils, at a total development cost of zero roubles.
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Sadly, this particular story is cacca. Fisher designed the pen independently at a cost of $2m and subsequently offered it to NASA. NASA liked it and since then both the Americans AND the Russians have used space pens. Pencils are a no no in space as they give off dust that can interfere with electronics and represent a fire risk in 100% oxygen atmospheres.
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It's a good story though and, even though it's a shaggy dog story, it does contain a grain of truth.
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During a road trip through the Southern States last year, Tracy and myself spent some quality time in Huntsville, Alabama. Hunstville was a relatively small town until about 1950 when the US Government turned it over to Wernher von Braun and his zany crew of unprosecuted war criminals to build missiles, sorry peaceful spacecraft, in. SS Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun was one of the 'Good' Nazis who went over to the Allies in 1945. After developing the V2 rockets that flattened a good part of London in 1944, built by a slave labour force that died by the thousand, Wernher admitted that he was actually one great big softie who was only ever interested in peaceful uses for frigging enormous missiles.
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Learning the Wernher von Braun story, later in life, solved a personal childhood mystery as to why that really scary man with that weird accent used to appear on Disney produced 'The Challenge of Space' documentaries when I was five.
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Post 1950 Huntsville became a rather large town, complete with the Wernher von Braun Civic Centre at its heart, just jam packed full of interesting peaceful research and production facilities. In fact, Huntsville was such a peaceful place that the Russians marked the city down as the fourth most important target after Washington, New York and NORAD.
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Anyway, to the point. Huntsville is home to a really spiffy NASA museum. Inside the museum we sat through an interesting documentary about the Space Race and the International Space Station. The funniest part of the movie came when we saw a clip of preparation for a Russian launch. Unlike the altogether more stage-managed NASA launches, the Russian count down procedures seemed to consist of various cosmonauts, technicians, their portly wives and kids standing around the base of the rocket, leaning on the enormous exhaust nozzles, smoking hand rolled cigarettes, sipping vodka and chatting.
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Outside of the movie we were equally amused by a display of typical cosmonaut food, which included tinned pilchards and cartons of tomato juice, and travel accessories including tatty suitcases, folding toothbrushes and disposable razors all highly reminiscent of a cheap package holiday c.1975.
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Almost getting to the point now …
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The point is the Russian rockets were, and probably still are, better than the German, sorry, American ones. They were sturdy, reliable and capable of lifting enormous loads. The Russians didn’t muck around with developing freeze-dried food or elaborate launch procedures because they didn't need to. Everything was overbuilt, just to be on the safe side, and robust enough for use in a 3rd World country. The only thing they really had to worry about was the impact of a zero G environment on a cosmonaut living off a diet of tinned fish and tomato juice.
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I could bang on about this point for ages. I've seen crappy little Ladas beat Range Rovers, Land Rovers and Land Cruisers up rough terrain. Right now the Iraqis are disabling multimillion dollar Abrams AFVs and Blackhawk helicopters with $30 RPGs operated by sixteen year olds. Low tech is good. Rivets are good.
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Where am I going with this?
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Digital Cameras and iPods.
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I bought my brother a digital camera two years ago so that he could record some snaps of his new born daughter. Last year, when they went on holiday to Italy, he left the digicam at home and took one of my old film SLRs instead. He just couldn’t face the hassle of using the digicam. With the film camera he didn’t have to worry about recharging batteries, filling up or having to back up his memory card, or printing the pictures when he got back home. Nope, three rolls of film in the camera, down to the chemists and a 100 pictures came back out with no hassle at all. Some of them were even OK.
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iPods
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I am the proud owner of a digital jukebox I bought more than three years ago; back in the days when most people didn’t know what an MP3 was and those that did thought downloading or ripping them was a very sad pastime indeed. My MP3 player is shaped like and weighs the same as anti-tank mine. At its heart, it is nothing more than a computer hard disk, a circuit board and four AA batteries loosely held together with Duck tape. In many ways it's very Russian, even though it's really French. It is the anti iPod.
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Unlike an iPod …

• it has survived over three years of heavy use
• it contains no U2 tracks recorded after 1989
• when the batteries start to lose their charge after a few months I can put new ones in
• I am not hooked into proprietary download services, music formats or copy protection
• the headphones aren’t rubbish. OK they're not white but they're also not rubbish
• most importantly, it doesn’t pretend to be a consumer product

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy digicams and MP3 players immensely. That is because I'm a geek. Nearing middle-aged but a geek nevertheless. These toys need the love and attention that only a geek can offer. For the vast majority of people buying this stuff they are onto a loser. All praises be to the power of marketing; particular kudos to Apple and Sony.
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What proportion of people who picked up iPods or digicams over the last year or so have backed up their music or pictures? What happens to all that data when they change their computers or their hard disk dies? In five or ten years time how many of these people are going to have more than a handful of photographs or records from this year? Maybe it doesn’t matter that they're going to lose most of their pictures and music collection next time their computer conks out, but shouldn’t it? Sadly, we have moved into an age where our photographs and our music last no longer than our reduced attention spans or the mayfly-level working life of our new toys.
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That's really cr*p.
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And this week's lottery roll-over jackpot is now worth $200bn!!!

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Best line of the day came from this site ...
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http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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'Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the outpouring of American aid and humanitarian help in the region devastated by the tsunami may also help Muslim nations see the United States in a better light.

They probably would if it were not for the $200 billion spent bombing the crap out of them and stealing their land. '

Yes, the US Congress is expecting the White House to put in for another $100 billion to cover the cost of the Iraq War on top of the $100 billion already granted. Let's write that number out in full shall we ...
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$200,000,000,000

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That's about $34 or £20 for every man, woman and child on the face of this planet. I don't know how much my own government is spanking on this disasterous war but it's bound to be some equally stupid figure.
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And the folks in the White House think that spending a tiny fraction of that on disaster relief is going to win us all over to their way of thinking?
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Anyway, I'm going to do my bit by putting a fiver into a prize fund for the first story from a Murdoch owned journalist that links the Indian Ocean Tsunami with Al Qaeda and the Occupation of Iraq. We've already had Tsunami Paedophile stories and half-arsed attempts to somehow associate the Tsunami with Global Warming. Next stop Tsunamis and SARS then bravely onwards towards Tsunamis and Islamic Fundamentalism ...
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Hey! Are you laughing at my watch?

Terror Watch

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Came across this link today …
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http://www.propagandamatrix.com/.../040105redflag.htm
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This article claims that US department of Homeland Security has sent an advisory notice warning security staff at airports to look out for people wearing watches with built-in barometers. Apparently Al-Qaeda has been looking into buying some, along with novelty watches with built in lighters.
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Whilst not definite proof of terrorist intent, anyone wearing gadget-boy watches in airports should be subject to 'special' treatment just to be sure.
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The suggestion appears to be that terrorists intend to use these watches as triggers to detonate incendiary devices at pre-set altitudes.
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I'm always up for a challenge and spent 15 minutes this afternoon trying to fabricate an IAD out of one of my several watch-altimeters, a disposable cigarette lighter and a selection of common household ingredients; mixed in just the right proportions.
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I failed miserably. Not only could I come up with a suitable mechanical linkage between the watch and the striker on the lighter, I also couldn’t get round the problem that passenger aircraft cabins are pressurised. Even if the cabins weren't pressurised, anyone who owns one of these watches knows they never work properly anyway. Having said that, Casio watches are famous for coming with dozens of features nobody ever uses, so there is some chance that there is an 'Act as detonator for IAD' option nested three levels down in their indecipherable menu structure.
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I eventually concluded that it would be much easier to operate the lighter with my hand, if only it wasn't nailed to the floor by the weight of the watch.
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Now the more sceptical people out there might question the potential damage that could be caused by a functioning watch-lighter combo anyway. However, speaking from personal experience of cheap Spanish lighters with poor flame control, those babies can remove a nostril full of hair and entire eyebrows in an instant.
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Of course, you could simply ban people taking cigarette lighters and matches onto aircraft but the Tobacco industry has ensured that that isn’t an option. Let's face it, if the US Cutlery and Nail Clipper industries had as much influence as the Tobacco business, airline passengers would still be eating with metal forks held in neatly manicured hands.
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A quick recap on God

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I am not a practicing Christian
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or Muslim
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or Jew

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About the only thing I do practice is Onanism. On quite a heroic scale. After 25 years of practising I am now quite good at it.

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However, some of the media coverage concerning the tsunami is starting to get under my skin. Many news outlets, in search of 'thoughtful' angles to cover the tsunami story, have started kicking out that tired old war-horse …

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'If there is such a thing as God why would he permit such terrible suffering'

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The implied conclusion is usually that there is no God.

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I have just sat through a discussion on BBC's Newsnight featuring a Catholic Cardinal, someone from the Muslim Council and an academic atheist. On a points basis the atheist won.

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He shouldn’t have. The problem is that the Pro God lobby is usually represented by religious people who inevitably start talking about subjective concepts such as faith. The atheists always seem stronger because their arguments usually sound somehow more scientific or rational, even though they are not.

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At the risk of repeating myself …

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Atheism is no more scientific than a belief in God. Both are belief systems that cannot be proved or disproved by our existing scientific techniques.

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If someone can come up with a scientifically testable hypothesis that disproves God I'd love to know.

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Anyway, back to the question of the moment, if a benevolent God exists why would he permit such suffering?

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Well, he's God. That means he's cleverer than we are and it is pretty arrogant of us to believe that we can second guess the motives of a far superior intellect and petulantly declare that God doesn't exist because he fails to meet the expectations that we set for him. Also, we cannot for a second pretend to know how he goes about his business. For all we know, in the moment before those tsunami victims left this life, God could easily have provided them with a whole lifetime of experience in an instant. If God had created a World without pain or struggle where all of us lived cosy predictable lives, dying in our sleep at 95, we would not develop as individuals. The very reason for us being given life and individual personalities would be negated. The fragility of our existence should inspire each of us to live the best life that we can; for the benefit of those around us and ourselves, right now and for every waking moment. God has already compensated those people killed in the tsunami. Those of us left on this Earth should learn the appropriate lesson and get on with living decent lives.

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Now, of course, this could all be bollocks. However, it does answer the question without ducking the issue and cannot be proved or disproved scientifically. It is a self-consistent belief system; like atheism or the belief that elephants and butterflies share a common ancestor. I would suggest, however, that the God-based explanation offers a more satisfying explanation for the reason for our existence, the trials we live through and a guide to how we should live those lives.

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And I don't even go to church.

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I want to be a corporation

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I've been having trouble with Tiscali, my ISP, lately and wrote an email to their customer support people just after Christmas. Unusually, they replied the next day to tell me that 'yes, your local broadband circuit is near to full capacity and we have booked a local upgrade that will take place in 14 days'.

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Now, the fact that my ISP has been delivering me 1960's acoustic coupled modem speeds at a 21st century broadband price is probably of little interest to anyone except me, but it got me thinking …

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How would Tiscali feel if I wrote to them saying that my monthly payment would be delivered 14 days late or that, due to high levels of demand in my area, I would only be able to pay 20% of their charge this month? Presumably they wouldn’t be too chuffed. Nor would they be over the moon if they had to make ten telephone calls to me on premium rate lines to chase up that payment.

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But it's not just Tiscali is it? Miss a plane by five minutes and the airline will screw you royally. However, if it decides to delay your flight by a few hours or cancel it altogether the airline will, um, screw you royally. Ditto for banks. And credit card companies. And insurance companies. And pretty much any company really. Peculiarly for supposed democracies, companies always seem to have the law on their side rather than the individual. Companies also possess the economies of scale to enable them to employ people whose sole function is to jerk you around whenever they make a mistake.

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Companies also

• pay lower tax rates
• can set aside expenses against their income when paying those lower tax rates
• are immortal and therefore, ultimately, can aim to outlive anyone making a claim against them provided they can string out the process long enough

About the only reliable means I've discovered to take on companies that attempt to drag me through a Dungeons and Dragons style labyrinth of Indian-based call centres is to:

1. find out the name of the parent company Finance Director, then
2. fill out a small claims form with his name at the top, then
3. fax a copy to the company head office with a note saying I'll be popping the claim in the post to the court the next day

This normally works a treat, as the bozos at the other end usually reckon that it's more cost effective to give me my money back than face a tirade of poop from a Head office PA when the summons pops into their in-tray. This technique is a winner but only works if a clear loss has been incurred and the total claim is less than £500. In all other situations the individual has no option but to swivel and maybe do a little whistling as well.

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Yes, it's great being a company. They have all the upsides of being people with none of the down. Like us mere mortals, they too can have personalities, travel the world, even sire families. About the only thing they can’t do is vote but, with all the money they save on their taxes, they usually have enough put aside to cut out the middleman and buy politicians direct.

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An excellent recent example in the UK was the proposed introduction of legislation to permit enormous super casinos in the UK. In my entire life I have never heard anyone else in this country bemoan the lack of domestic super casinos. No political party has even placed such a suggestion in a manifesto. Yet, somehow, this proposal appeared from nowhere. The estimated £100m spent on 'lobbying', i.e. free holidays and jig-a-jig, politicians possibly, just possibly, had something to do with it.

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But I digress.

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As a philosophical point, even if humankind were ever to conquer death we would probably be well-advised to reinvent it all over again. Think about who would benefit if such technology were ever available. The richest, the most powerful, the downright naughtiest of our kind. Death is a winner. No matter how cruel the tyrant , how crazed the despot, he is always guaranteed to pop his clogs in the end. Having said that, when was the last time you heard of a head of state or CEO of a corporation dying prematurely? They live longer than the rest of us anyway and, until a time comes when these people can extend their lives even further, companies and other large organisations offer a form of ersatz immortality.

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Yes, I have decided to incorporate myself. Stef plc would have the potential to live forever and be able to set the cost of its lunches, mortgage payments and toothpaste against its already significantly reduced tax bills. Anyone calling me would have to do so through a premium rate telephone number and I could perform all of my secondary bodily functions in low-rent 3rd world countries, attended by a dirt cheap work force. How can I lose?

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